


das letzte schöne sternentier

by madanach



Category: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
Genre: Alcohol, Crossdressing, Gender Confusion, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, M/M, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-20
Updated: 2018-05-08
Packaged: 2019-02-17 14:07:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13078473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madanach/pseuds/madanach
Summary: “Mufti owes me a dress,” Blixa says.“You’re going all out."Blixa leans back into Nick and whispers conspiratorially, “I don’t need a dress to be pretty.”Nick says, “You’re already the prettiest girl in the bar,” and is caught off guard by the ferocity of Blixa’s smile.Girls' night at Risiko.





	1. Chapter 1

“No boys allowed,” says the guy at the door to Risiko.

Nick clears his throat. He says, “Sorry, what?”

The guy sticks his thumb back towards the milling crowd in the front room behind him. “It’s girls’ night.”

Nick squints at the mass of people. He definitely sees guys. Some of them are wearing jewelry. One of them’s got on a dress. “Huh.” That’s a new one.

“Sorry,” the bouncer says, in a tone that suggests he’s not, particularly. “Get dressed and come back.”

Hm. “Orright,” Nick says, “I’ll do that.” He turns around and looks at the line of foot-tapping tweakers behind him, most of whom, he will admit, do seem to be in drag. He’ll blame this on his peripheral vision, then.

He steps out of line and towards the cardboard-papered front window, hoping a drunk will have torn a hole in it so he can catch a glimpse of someone he knows. No such luck — he watches the beer-stained backs of boxes pull away and then flatten against the glass damply as the people leaning on it shift their weight. He pouts. Alright then: plan B.

The thin alley between Risiko and the neighboring building is filled with years worth of litter and a trio of displaced dancers, gyrating languidly to the muffled beat of music with joints in their hands and bruises on their inner arms. Nick gives them a wave, then shoves himself up onto the precarious lid of a trash can and raps on the dirty little window that leads into the storage room.

No answer — predictably, because noise and such. Nick cups his hands and presses them against the glass. “Barkeep!”

Further silence, and then a sliver of light as the storage room door cracks open and someone pokes their head inside.

“Oh, Maria, hey,” Nick says. “Let me in, will you?”

Maria flicks on the light, crossing her arms in the doorframe as the bulb buzzes with agitation. She says, “Can’t.”

Nick presses his forehead against the glass and feels forty-year-old grime take up residence in his eyebrows. “Why not?”

She shrugs. “Dress code. It’s girl’s night.” There’s a flower in her hair to match her jeans and pompadour.

“Yeah, that’s what Herr Hans said at the door.”

“Joachim.”

Nick says, “I sure will remember that,” and then, “Look, can you just get Blixa?”

She rolls her eyes and sticks her head back into the bar, yelling something incomprehensible. Nick taps his fingers against the chipping stone wall until she pulls her head back inside and says, “No.”

Nick pouts indignantly. “Why?”

“He says you’re not pretty enough to get in.”

“Oh, that cunt.”

Maria laughs at him. “Fuck off, Nick. See you in a minute.”

She closes the door, leaving him alone with the sputtering lightbulb. Nick groans loud enough that the dancers hear him and start singing. It’s a nice gesture of solidarity.

He emerges from the alley. The line out the door has shortened somewhat, but there are still groups of floral-clad punks milling about, smoking and drinking as the necklines of their dresses inch steadily down their sloping shoulders. Nick grudgingly admires the dedication of the redhead teetering in pumps as a girl — real, this one — does his lipstick.

Fuck it. If the whole of Schöneberg can get into Risiko tonight, so can Nick. He sets his jaw and approaches the group.

The redhead watches him as he walks up, his smile tellingly loose. Nick thinks, _thank God_ , and grins at him. “Hello, ladies and gents,” he says, sticking his hands in his pockets in the hope it makes him seem wobegone and friendly. “Could I beg a favor?”

The girl with the lipstick instinctively reaches for the cigarettes in her pocket. Nick says quickly, “Oh, no, thanks. I’m actually having a bit of trouble getting into the party.”

Next to the redhead, a guy wearing a corset and pearl bracelets says through a thick accent, “You need to dress like a girl.”

“Thank you,” Nick says, “Yes, I know. I’m just not sure how to go about that at the—” He looks around at the empty tram stop and shuttered windows, “—late hour. I was wondering if I could borrow some lipstick.”

“I see.” The girl wielding the offending instrument pushes the lid on with a loud click and says, “Was denkt ihr?”

The guy in the corset says something that makes her laugh. Nick very much regrets not learning German. She says, “I’m not sure it would look good.”

“I don’t think it matters,” Nick says, and then, after a moment, “ _Excuse_ me.”

She shakes her head and chuckles. “Sorry,” she says. “Here, this is better. Uli, give me your shawl.”

“Ach,” says the redhead, but he unwinds a thin patterned scarf from around his neck and holds it out.

Nick thanks him and takes it, and then stares at it for a moment, uncertain. He wraps it around his neck. “Is that enough, y’think?”

“No,” says the guy in the corset. The redhead shakes his head.

The girl says, “Hang on.” Nick watches her as she digs a cigarette out of her pocket, can’t find a lighter, bums one from the redhead, lights her cigarette, and takes a proper long drag. She shoves the lighter into her own pocket and stares Nick down, her buddies amused and unconcerned. Nick hears the song change in the bar behind them and deeply regrets asking a group of strangers for a makeover.

“Alright,” she says after a minute. “I’ve got it. Take off your shirt.”

Nick contemplates protesting. He figures at this point it’s a waste of energy. He takes his shirt off.

The girl pulls the scarf from his neck and gives him an appraising look, then walks around behind him. He knits his eyebrows. “Lift your arms,” she says.

He lifts his arms obediently and makes a face at the redhead, who politely hides his laughter behind his hand. A flutter of fabric at his waist betrays what’s about to happen a second before it happens, and then the girl reaches around him and pulls the scarf up around his nipples.

“Oh, lovely,” Nick says. The guy in the corset guffaws. “It’s not quite bikini season, is it?”

There’s a puff of smoke on his upper back — the girl’s laughing as she ties the scarf into a knot. “Not really,” she admits, coming around to the front to survey her handiwork. “But it’ll do.”

“How do I look?”

“Good,” says the redhead. Nick cocks out his knee and strikes a pose.

“You need something else,” the guy in the corset says. “Ela, die Halskette?”

“Good idea.” She reaches past her fraying braids and unclasps the necklace she’s wearing, a chunky red thing weighed down with a bead the size of a golf ball. Nick takes it with apprehension. He doesn’t even know how the clasp works.

The redhead saves him, wobbling over in his heels to snatch it from Nick’s hand with helpful briskness and loop it around his neck. “Thank you,” he says, and the redhead squeezes his shoulder and pulls him around to evaluate him.  

“It’s good,” says the redhead, and the girl chimes in too, “It’s good.”

Nick tosses his hair dramatically. They laugh.

“Let’s all go in,” the girl says. She hooks her arm through Nick’s and clicks her tongue at the guy in the corset.

“Of course,” he says, in his drawl of an accent. “We have to take care of the lady.” The redhead squeezes Nick’s shoulder again.

Not pretty enough! Fuck Blixa. He’s the belle of the ball.

“Los!” It’s all the German he knows besides _Ach, du scheiße_ and _Bier, bitte_ , but it seems to do the trick, and he waltzes up to the bouncer with what he supposes amounts to a girl on each arm. Not bad for a guy wearing a scarf around his tits.

Nick drags the name out of the depths of his skull. “Joachim! Long time no see.”

The bouncer looks grudgingly impressed. “Ela, er ist bei dir?”

“Nee, bestimmt nicht,” she says. Nick bats his eyelashes. The bouncer makes a face of such profound weariness that someone in the line behind them starts giggling.

“Come in, then, ladies,” he says, dragging out the last word, and finally, after endless trial and tribulation, Nick bounces over the threshold into Risiko.

The sense of satisfaction lasts only long enough for the girl to reach up and unclasp Nick’s necklace, catching it deftly when it falls down his chest. “I need that back, thank you.”

“Sure, sure,” Nick says, already peeking over the crowd for a glimpse of a familiar face. He reaches behind him to unknot the scarf but the redhead slaps at his wrist.

“Keep it,” he says, grinning his easy grin. “It’s a gift.”

“Oh, that’s sweet,” Nick says, and after a moment of contemplation decides to lean into the persona and pecks the guy on the cheek. He feels decisively proud of himself when the girl waggles her eyebrows.

Behind them, through the choked mass of dykes and drag queens, there’s a brittle crash of glass, and a voice starts screaming harshly over the din. Nick beams.

“That would be me,” he says to his compatriots. “Sorry to run, but find me if you want a dance, love.” He directs that last bit at the girl and the redhead both, in an effort to be gentlemanly. “Have fun!”

He shoves ungracefully into the crowd at his side. It’s not easy to see in the dim light of the room, but he knows they’re all crowded along the bar, stacked three and four bodies out to grab a drink from whatever unlucky soul’s working tonight. Maria, in this case, and —

“Blixa,” Nick says, feeling himself start to grin.

Somewhere in the dusty corners of Nick’s mind there’s a sensible voice that has some very wise things to say about the mess of leather, eyeshadow and sweat in front of him, clutching the shattered neck of a gin bottle in one hand and gesturing ferociously at the poor liquor-soaked bastard at the bar with the other. Nick can’t understand a word of what he’s yelling, but from the scattered glass he can hazard a guess.

Blixa’s victim, though rooted to the spot, has the stunned half-smile of someone who’s not complaining. Nick watches Blixa splay his hand in the spilled gin and scoff, shoving his sticky palm into the boy’s chest. The guy gives him a look like, _What can you do?_

 _What indeed_ , Nick thinks, as Blixa drops the broken bottle on the bar in disgust and straightens up, his spine uncoiling like a yawning cat. His concessions for ladies’ night seem to be that he’s taken off his shirt and put on eyeshadow, already smeared severely on his right eye where Nick knows he rubs it.

Maria catches his eye from her perch on the minifridge and gives him a wolf grin. Nick makes himself stop smiling like a dumbass.

“Did it get on the floor?”

It takes Nick a second to realize Blixa’s speaking in English, and another second to realize the question is directed at him. Blixa hasn’t moved his stare from the unfortunate drunk. “Oh—” Nick says, and looks down at the floor. The jagged bottom of the gin bottle has taken up residence under the bar stools, already accumulating dust. “Yeah.”

Blixa snaps something at the culprit, who decides that it’s time to cut his losses — he mutters a last apology and hops off the stool, bleeding into the group behind him. Blixa glares daggers after him.

Nick bends down and picks the oval of glass off the floor. It sticks, enough that Nick has to tug at it, and he winces. He doesn’t really want to think about the cocktail of liquid and grit that goes into bar floor sludge.

He stands up and plops it in front of Blixa. “For you, my love,” he says.

Blixa raises his eyebrows and says nothing, tossing the broken lump into a trash can by his side.

Nick tries a charming grin. Blixa remains immune to his smizing and pulls two whiskey tumblers from underneath the bar, dropping them in front of Nick with no regard for the mess of glass and gin.

He turns away towards the back bar, saying something to Maria. Nick admires the way the bones jump underneath the skin of his back, and then puts his elbow into a pile of sharp grit when he slides onto the barstool. He thinks that’s probably a song.

Maria says something to Blixa and points towards the ceiling. Nick follows her finger and sees a lone, haggard broom on a high shelf, a few centuries’ worth of cobwebs pasting it to the wall. Blixa shakes his head like an agitated horse and kicks over a beer crate to use as a stepstool.

“Why’s the broom on the ceiling?” Nick asks.

Blixa hauls himself onto the bar and stands on his tiptoes, his feet dangerously close to an overturned shot glass. “Don’t ask stupid questions.”

“Of course, silly me,” Nick mutters. Blixa dislodges the broom with both hands — Maria ducks as a shower of dirt rains down and moves over towards Nick, grabbing a bottle of vodka on the way.

She gestures towards Nick’s improvised costume. “It’s a good look.”

“Thank you _very_ much,” Nick says.

Maria fills the glasses with more vodka than Nick tends to enjoy drinking straight, but she says, “Tonight’s not the night you start your own tab, is it,” and he figures he’ll be grateful for what he’s got.

“It certainly is not,” Nick says, and then, “Thank you, Blixa!” a bit louder.

Blixa jumps down onto the floor with a _whump_ , wielding the broom like a warhammer. “You’re welcome.” Maria pulls the trashcan out as he starts to sweep and gives Nick a look he would probably label as significant, if he was in the habit of naming looks.

He begins to brush the leftover shards of glass on the bar into a pile instead, touching the edges with care. The same part of him that ignores all of his wise internal musing about Blixa urges him to put his whole damn hand in it.

When he looks up, Blixa is squatted down, gathering the fragments of bottle and other pieces of trash into a dustpan made out of a VCR carton. Nick puts his thumb into the spilled gin instead. He tastes it. It’s gross.

“Don’t do that,” Blixa says. Nick jolts. He didn’t realize he stood up.

Nick has seen Blixa lick whiskey off of everything under the sun. He says, “Oh, all _right_ ,” making sure to labor it.  

Blixa puts his elbows onto the bar, his shoulders curving forward. He picks up his drink. “What are you wearing?”

“Some bloke lent it to me,” Nick says. “Since you wouldn’t let me in, you cruel bastard.”

Blixa shrugs. “It’s girl’s night.”

Nick holds out his glass and Blixa clinks it, echos Nick’s _prost_. Nick holds his gaze — Blixa scared him with superstitions of bad sex — and says, “Didn’t stop you, did it?” before he knocks half the glass back.

Blixa bares his teeth at the taste of the vodka. He says, “I’m already a girl.”

“Is that why you aren’t wearing a shirt?”

Blixa shakes his head and Nick notices, for the first time, heavy clip-on earrings under the shaggy mess of his hair. “Mufti owes me a dress,” he says.

“You’re going all out,” Nick says, refusing to spare precious mental bandwidth for the image of Blixa in a dress, which is absolutely not a thing he has thought about before at all.

They both turn around to watch Maria clamber onto the bar and replace the broom, infinitely steadier than Blixa had been. Blixa leans back into Nick and whispers conspiratorially, “I don’t need a dress to be pretty.”

Nick says, “You’re already the prettiest girl in the bar,” and is caught off guard by the ferocity of Blixa’s smile. He stares into the pile of broken glass instead of look at it.

Blixa’s fingers invade his tunnel vision, brushing the pile into a neater, tighter circle and then escaping to grab Nick by the wrist. “Here,” he says, pulling Nick’s hands together until he gets the gist and cups them.

Then, as Blixa does, he begins to pick up the shards one by one and put them in Nick’s palms. Nick ignores Maria’s stare and tries to keep his hands still, though the more he thinks about them the more they threaten to shake.

With the care and patience of a sculptor, Blixa slowly transfers the glass debris into Nick’s hands. The music from the inner rooms is loud enough that the beat travels up Nick’s elbows, the pieces on top rocking in time until Blixa drops another into the pile and stills them. It’s hypnotic, in a way — Nick feels his adrenaline fading, the cacophony of the crowd quieting into a hum.  

When all the glass is gathered into his hands, Blixa cups his own underneath Nick’s. Nick lets the glittering pieces pour out of his palms like sand in an hourglass and Blixa flattens his hands to catch them, watching them shine in the dim bar light.

They both stare at it for a long moment. Blixa’s bony fingers look like a cage to Nick, greedily trapping loose stars. He’ll blame Blixa later for evoking poetry.

Nick says, “Aren’t you supposed to be bartending?”

Blixa says, “Oh. Yeah.”

The glass goes into the trash can with the rest of its kin. Nick finishes his drink in mourning.

It only takes Blixa ten minutes to get tired of fielding drinks. His ungracious end coincides with Maria grabbing something over the head of a pretty blond — girl — from another pretty blond — boy — and handing it to Blixa, who promptly drops a beer in front of an insulted drag queen and darts over to Nick with a grin.

“Come on,” he says, yanking at Nick’s wrist. “Take that off, it’s bullshit.”

Nick looks down at his makeshift bikini top and pouts. “It was growing on me.”

“It’s bullshit,” Blixa repeats. “I’m doing your nails.”

“You’re doing my what?”

Blixa points at where the end of the bar curves against the wall and doesn’t deign to answer. Nick figures the night might as well go this way. He obediently fights his way to the end of the bar and commandeers the last stool from a halfway-to-fucked couple that seem to realize they’d rather be lying down.

When Blixa makes his way back, he has the vodka in one hand and his mystery treasure in the other. The disavowal of responsibility seems to have lightened his shoulders — Nick makes a note to apologize to Maria, but he looks at Blixa’s screwy half-smile and can’t pretend he’s that sorry.

“Are you honestly going to do my nails?” Nick asks.

Blixa heaves himself onto the counter, sitting cross-legged. Nick has to tilt his chin up to look at him. “Yes,” he says. “Stand up.”

Nick does what he’s told for reasons he can’t quite understand, leaning against the wall as Blixa puts his feet up where Nick was just sitting. He hands Nick the bottle of vodka and Nick takes a grateful swig, wondering what he’s gotten himself into.

In his lap, Nick can see his spoils: a tube of lipstick, a bottle of nail polish, and a chunky pencil that Nick guesses is eyeliner. They’re at that point of the night, then. Nick cranes his neck to look for a clock over the crowd before he decides he’d rather not know.

“Come here,” Blixa says. “You look like a boy.”

Nick lets Blixa pull his hand onto his knee. “I’ve been informed I’m a beautiful woman.”

“That person was lying to you,” Blixa says. He twists open the nail polish cap with a not-insubstantial amount of effort and paints a red stripe onto Nick’s thumbnail.

“I’m insulted,” Nick says, mesmerized by the sight of Blixa’s hands managing a soft touch. It’s strange how delicate he looks, hunched over with the tongue-bitten focus of a kid at a sleepover. Nick can see him chewing his lip, trying not to draw outside the lines.

Someone jostles them and Blixa cusses sharply. The spell snaps like a twig. The bones come back, Blixa’s sallow skin and the makeup-smeared hollows of his eyes.

The music changes. Nick says, “Blixa, let’s go dance.”

Blixa smiles slightly and lets go of Nick’s hand. “I’m not done yet.” He pulls Nick’s other hand onto his lap while Nick holds his newly-painted nails up to the light. He doesn’t have any idea how long nail polish takes to dry — he blows on it tentatively and Blixa laughs.

“This was your idea,” Nick says, feeling emasculated. Blixa squeezes his hand.

“Oops,” he says, knocking his knee against Nick’s chest. Nick forgives him immediately. He’s acutely aware of the lack of space between Blixa, his body, and the wall, and he thinks it might be impeding his decision-making skills.

“There,” Blixa says, patting the back of Nick’s knuckles. “Don’t touch anything.”

Nick looks down at his hand, too brutish and unwieldy for its new look. His nails are stubs, his fingers lacking a girl’s slim elegance. They look like they’re used for what they’re used for: drinking and fucking. It makes him uneasy.

There’s a tiny part of him that wishes Blixa was feeling the same way. It would make it so much easier. He wouldn’t have to watch Blixa play the part of a manicurist while propped up on a shitty bar, tense against the ebb of the crowd with his tongue between his teeth. He’s trying not to get nail polish on his pants, Nick realizes, those fucked up leather things that see Hell every Sunday. Blood, liquor, piss, fine — but not nail polish.

He turns in towards the bar and watches the shape of Maria dart in and out of focus, hands full. He feels like something’s lodged in his throat — he takes a pull of vodka to clear it but it just makes his chest feel tighter.

Next to him, Blixa murmurs, “Be patient.”

Nick snakes an arm around Blixa’s neck. His wet nails stick slightly on the skin of Blixa’s shoulder. Blixa presses his cheek into Nick’s soft inner arm and Nick hates it, venomously, the knowledge that Blixa can be tender.

They should go dance. They should get properly fucked up, find the recipe for a good time and read it backwards. Nick can drug his tongue until he doesn’t care that it’s tied and Blixa can rant and rail at the onset of morning, voice like a gatling gun against the seasons and the tides and daybreak. Better that than another second of intimacy surrounded by drunks and voyeurs, another infinitesimal moment of peace.

Maria calls, “Blixa, der Mufti ist hier!” and Nick thinks, _I didn’t mean it, God, please, I didn’t_.

Blixa twists in Nick’s grip, craning his neck to look past the drunks at the bar. Maria points toward the inner room and shrugs her shoulders.

“Bullshit,” Blixa mumbles. He turns back inward and looks at his hands with irritation.

“They look better than mine,” Nick says, trying to be helpful. Blixa snorts a laugh.

“I know,” he says, and shrugs his shoulder until Nick, reluctantly, tugs his arm away. Blixa catches his hand before he can pull it back entirely. “I have to find Mufti.”

“I’ll come with,” Nick says automatically.

“I know,” Blixa says, again. “Wait for my nails to dry.”

He drops Nick’s hand. Nick passes him the bottle of vodka and he takes it with his fingers spread carefully apart, each placed with deliberation. The other hand stays loose on his lap, though Nick can see him fidgeting.

“Are you going to do my makeup?”

Blixa sets the bottle on the bar and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Do you want me to?”

“I don’t care.” The idea of a pencil near his eye is a bit scary, and Blixa’s drunk, but he’d do it.

“Hm.” Blixa narrows his eyes and stares at him long enough that Nick feels mildly uncomfortable. After a moment, he says, decisively, “No.”

“Why not?”

“Wouldn’t look good.”

“ _Why_ does everyone say that,” Nick says. Blixa laughs at him. “Still not pretty enough?”

Blixa says, “No.” He shakes his fingers out and jumps down into the meager space between Nick and the bar stool, turning to grab the vodka.

Nick can’t tell if he should roll his eyes or be genuinely insulted. He searches for a retort but can’t think of anything past _Your eyeshadow is smudged_ and _You probably look better in a dress than me_.

“It’s fine,” Blixa continues, and presses the bottle into Nick’s chest. Nick takes it on reflex, and Blixa leans in to kiss him on the cheek. “I forgive you.”

 _Girl’s night_ , Nick thinks faintly. He follows Blixa through the crowd.

The club has managed to cram in even more people since Nick came in. The creativity of some of the crossdressing is genuinely impressive — Nick sees a guy in a ballgown, among other outfits — but Blixa is intent on his goal and doesn’t give Nick time to linger. Last time he lost Blixa in a crowd he found him four hours later refereeing a boxing match on the roof.

They fight their way into the inner room, a darkened throng of people moving in approximate rhythm to the ear-achingly loud music, something heavy and American that Nick doesn’t recognize. There’s an empty drumset and a microphone onstage past the crowd, and the mic is catching the harsh asides of an argument from two men behind it.

Blixa stops sharply enough that Nick bumps into him, reaches back and grabs his wrist without looking. “Keep up.”

Nick laces their fingers together. “Sure.”

It’s a miracle they make it through the room without injury. Blixa keeps getting pulled aside by people he knows and he brushes them off, one after another, hand a vice around Nick’s. Nick gets more than one rude look from someone who resents his monopoly on Risiko's darling. Blixa doesn’t seem to notice.

The guy on the stage is Mufti, as it turns out, waging a vicious war against someone’s drummer for temporary possession of the kit. Blixa barks out his name until he turns around.

Mufti gives the other drummer a death glare and comes to kneel by the side of the stage, not sparing Nick a glance. They speak rapidly, but long enough that Nick gets bored and presses his forehead into the back of Blixa’s shoulder, closing his eyes and letting the music, the yelling crowd and Mufti bleed into the background of Blixa’s rumbling voice.

He starts back into consciousness when Blixa turns around. Their hands fall apart. “He’s getting it,” Blixa says, pulling the vodka from Nick’s grip.

Nick watches Blixa drink, then lets him tug at the scarf that Nick had almost forgotten was tied around his chest.

“I really hate this,” Blixa says.

“Fuck off,” Nick says. His T-shirt is tucked into his back pocket, but Blixa knows that.

“You look like you’re playing dress-up.”

“I am, Blixa.”

Blixa says, “Not anymore. Turn around.”

Because Nick is an idiot, he does what Blixa says. Blixa unties the scarf and yanks the shirt out of Nick’s pocket, pressing it into his hands when he turns around.

“You wanted to paint my nails,” Nick mutters. He pulls on the shirt anyway. Blixa nods in appreciation.

“See? You have a classic look.”

“What the fuck—“ Nick says, “What does that mean?”

Blixa smiles and doesn’t answer. Nick has a running theory that he gets off on being inscrutable. When he turns back to look for Mufti Nick elbows him and makes a pass at the vodka.

Blixa is tucked comfortably under his arm by the time Mufti comes back, though Nick suspects it’s as an excuse to hog the bottle. He accepts a flowery bundle of fabric with a muttered _Vielen dank_. Mufti looks at Nick and says, “Er macht’s nur mit dir.”

“I don’t speak German,” Nick says. “He knows I don’t speak German, right?”

Mufti grins at him. Blixa pulls away and says, “Let’s go.”

Not for the first time that night, the sensible voice in Nick’s head has some choice words about his situation. Nick gives it a full moment of consideration this time, watching Blixa’s skinny shoulders cut through the crowd like a knife, that maybe he _should_ just fuck off and get drunk with someone who doesn’t shorten his lifespan by the second. His first and last act of self-preservation on this mortal coil.

He can’t stomach it. It takes him until the hallway to catch up with Blixa, and he gets a tweaker’s finger in his eye for his trouble, but the decision make him feel slightly more grounded.

Blixa turns around, seeming to notice that Nick’s lagging behind. He doesn’t wait, exactly, but he ducks into the barricaded niche of the staircase as Nick jogs to catch up.

Nick corners him against the haphazard approximation of a door. Blixa holds the dress out in front of him and lets it unfurl itself.

It’s a bit dowdy, black with rosettes and short sleeves. It doesn’t look like it’ll even fit over Blixa’s shoulders. Blixa smiles sideways and tugs it over his neck, his arms long and unwieldy as he fights them through the crepey fabric. Nick grabs the hem and pulls it past his waist.

It settles, as Nick suspected, loose on the hips and much too tight around his chest. Blixa reaches up underneath the skirt to unhook the incomprehensible bondage mess he wears as a belt and Nick looks away, instinctively, to protect his modesty. He hears Blixa snort, then the muffled clang as leather and belts fall to the ground.

Nick looks at the floor, watches Blixa step out of his pants, barefoot, and then back into the beat-to-shit rubber boots he’s worn every day since Nick met him.

“Do you own any other shoes?” Nick asks.

Blixa laughs. Nick feels capable of looking at him again. “Probably not,” he says. “Maybe somewhere.”

“Some of these guys are wearing heels, you didn’t want heels?”

“I can’t walk in them,” Blixa says. He leans back against the wall and smirks.

Normally when girls do that, he kisses them. Nick feels a bit light-headed. He steps back to catch his breath and look at Blixa properly.

It shouldn’t work. Blixa’s halfway to corpse on his best days. There’s never a glint of color in his cheeks. His eyes are sunken, his arms bony and overlong, and he can’t hold a smile to save his life. Nick has theorized that he has three emotions and two of them are anger. He’s not winning any beauty pageants, not with his pallid skin and spider limbs, his violent skull of a face.

But Nick has always had a weakness for pretty girls, and the way Blixa tucks his hair behind his ear makes his chest ache. “Gorgeous,” he says, praying Blixa can’t tell that he means it.

Blixa steps away from the wall and spins, the skirt fanning out into an oval. Bemused, Nick watches his smile grow.

“Let me get the zipper,” Nick says. There’s a slit down to Blixa’s ass that shows every knob of his spine and it borders on the pornographic. Blixa goes still when Nick touches him, lets him push aside the hair falling down his neck and pull the cheap plastic zipper up to the rift between his shoulderblades. Nick grazes his thumb against Blixa’s nape and does his damndest not to remember every other girl he’s ever touched.

“Prettiest girl in the bar,” Blixa says, low voice like gravel. It takes a moment for Nick to remember what he’s referring to.

Nick searches for something to say. He decides on, “Yeah.”

Blixa steps backwards and Nick wraps his arms around his waist on reflex. He tucks his chin over Blixa’s shoulder and sees the corner of his smile, predatory. He knows how they must look.

“You’re enjoying this,” Nick accuses.

“Obviously.”

Nick squeezes Blixa’s waist. They stand there for another few seconds, then Nick forces himself to let go.

“Come watch me do my makeup?” Blixa says. It’s a rhetorical question.

They stop by the storage room so that Blixa can throw his pants behind a stack of beer cases, tottering precariously on a DIY pallet-board shelf. Blixa gives his handful of makeup to Nick so that he can step up on the lowest shelf and push it back farther, hiding it from sight with the half-empty boxes.

Nick says, “You reckon your pants need that much security?” Blixa gives him a look, and Nick says, “Just asking.” Far be it for him to question the intrinsic value of sweat-stained leather and body harnesses.

Blixa shoves the beer crate back until he’s satisfied, then jumps down and flips off the light. The room plunges into darkness.

“Boo,” Blixa says into his ear.

“I hate you,” Nick says, yanking open the door, and Blixa cackles.

Maria wolf-whistles when Blixa walks behind the bar. He curtsies, awkwardly exaggerated in his dated flowery dress, and the people lined along the bar begin to whoop.

It’s incredible, how all eyes go to him. Nick feels a bit resentful for reasons he can’t quite place.

Blixa asks Maria something, half-smiling at the drinkers that smile back at him. Nick dumps the makeup and vodka onto the back bar and, after a moment of hesitation, hops onto the minifridge. He looks out at the crowd, searching for anyone he knows.

No luck. He looks back at Blixa, his saving grace, at the precise moment that the man in question crosses the room and kneels down by the minifridge.

“What’re you looking for?” Nick asks. Blixa’s digging junk out of the cabinet, plastic cups and old cassettes and what looks to be a shoebox full of pen caps.

Blixa raps his knuckle against the cabinet door, like he does when he can’t remember a word. “A little mirror,” he says after a moment.

“Hm.” Nick watches him pull a wheelbarrow’s worth of trash out onto the floor, huff in annoyance, and shove it all back where it came from. He cracks at least two cassette tapes in the process — Nick makes a mental note not to leave him alone with anything valuable.

His search proves unsuccessful. He leaves to scour the rest of the bar, and Nick takes a long drink of the vodka, for lack of anything better to do.

As Blixa rifles through drawers and interrogates drinker after drinker with a bought cop’s persistence, an ugly voice in the back of Nick’s head tells him to start worrying.

It’s not that Blixa has a habit of leaving. It’s just that Nick’s not always enough to keep his interest.

He doesn’t take it personally, because it’s Blixa, but sometimes he gets drunk or high or otherwise fucked up and turns around expecting to see Blixa and Blixa’s not there. It’s his least favorite of the regular negativities, those feelings that are bad but not fatal, the hangovers and financial anxieties and stage frights of his daily life in Berlin. The slow spread of mold in the corner of his bedroom, their producer’s joking-but-not-joking threats to bar them from the studio for good, waking up without Blixa.

Nick thinks, _I’m depressive, I’m paranoid, I’m a pessimist to the worst degree_ , _just don’t think about it_. He searches for an anchor and comes up with Blixa’s smile like a sated cat, his dress zipped tight and Nick’s arms around his waist.

Nick shakes himself out of his stupor. He takes another drink of the vodka.

He realizes when he looks up that Blixa’s started bartending again, like someone unwittingly pressed a reset button and he defaulted back to factory settings. The restlessness and agitation from earlier is gone, though — he seems like he’s settled into the night, an easier set to his shoulders under the weight of an ill-fitting dress.

Maybe it’s the alcohol, or whatever Blixa was on before he got here. Nick doubts it.

Blixa slides a beer to a finger-tapping queen who looks at him with interest and the jealousy hits Nick with such force that he feels sick. He looks at his lap and prays for his swinging vision to slow.

His ragged jeans come into focus, bleached from wear and beat to shit. The scarf he wore into the bar hangs from his belt loop off the front of the minifridge, and the makeup he tossed to the side when he sat down rocks gently to the loud music, dangerously close to the edge. Nick picks up the lipstick and uncaps it.

Red, obviously. He taps his forefinger against the tip, leaving a crimson dot. Nick rubs his thumb against it and watches scarlet smudge into pink smudge into the color his skin gets when he presses it, rubs harder until it all goes away.

He carefully puts the cap back on and looks up. Maria is talking to Blixa, her arm at his side on the bar. Blixa’s got one arm crossed across his chest and tugs at his earring with the other, avoiding eye contact. His smile is rare and sincere.  

She says something that makes him laugh. He looks down at the ground, shy, and Nick simmers with envy.

The minute Blixa gets pulled away Nick calls Maria over. “I want to buy his drinks.”

Maria gives him a look. “You don’t even have your own tab.”

“Yeah, well, I want to open one.” He scratches his cheek self-consciously. “No time like the present, right?”

“Are you also going to pay for all the drinks he bought you?”

“He bought me _one_ drink,” Nick says, and then stops himself when she shakes the half-empty bottle of vodka in front of his nose. “Okay, okay, I’ll get that.”

She stops short of openly laughing at him. “Do you actually have the money to pay for this?”

“Does Blixa?”

“I think it comes out of his checks,” she says.

“Oh.” That would explain why he can never pay rent. “Well,” Nick says, “I’m being chivalrous.”

“Good for you.” Maria turns around and Nick looks where she’s looking, at Blixa with his rainboots and his ratty hair, leaning halfway over the bar to chat up a punk-adjacent couple wearing identical ginger wigs. “He just bought them drinks.”

“How do you know?”

The girl has her finger hooked in the sleeve of Blixa’s dress, her grin drunk and happy.

Maria says with something approaching admiration, “It’s his night.” Nick feels pathetic.

She returns to her bartending, thankfully mute on the topic of Nick’s visible turmoil, and Nick gets a brief moment of respite as she comes up with some excuse to tug Blixa away from the flirty couple. He pours six shots and a trio of messy cocktails before he seems to remember Nick.

He puts down the drinks and walks over with an air of half-interested necessity, like a tired waitress with a coffee pot. Nick forces a smile.

“Do you want me to find you a girl?” Blixa says. An afterthought, at best, for the spectator on the sidelines, so Blixa can shed the last of his obligations and wade back into the fray. A few strands of hair fall into his face, and Nick looks at them instead of at his eyes.

Nick says, “No, I don’t think so.”

“Alright.” Blixa’s already distracted, Nick can tell. The rest of the room is lively and loud, whereas Nick’s caving in with depressive self-pity. He can’t blame him.

“You never did your makeup,” Nick says. Blixa looks down at where he’s clutching the lipstick with both hands.

“I forgot,” Blixa says. He takes the lipstick, and Nick says, almost frantic with some awful, incomprehensible fear, “Let’s go outside and smoke.”

“You want to go outside and smoke,” Blixa repeats. Nick nods.

Someone calls Blixa’s name. Blixa turns, instinctively, and Nick reaches out, tucks the few escaping strands of hair behind his ear.

Blixa goes very still. Nick realizes, belatedly and with the impact of a bomb, that the bar is lined with dolled-up drunks and all of them are watching.

Before he can panic, Blixa twists and tucks his cheek into the open palm of Nick’s hand. “Outside,” he says.

“Okay,” Nick breathes, infinitely grateful. He flees, Blixa an unassailable presence at his side, through the crush and out the door.

Blixa skips out onto the sidewalk in front of him. Nick watches him breathe deep, the floral fabric at his shoulders pulling taut, and mimics it. The fresh air already has him feeling better — he didn’t realize how much of a toll the sweat and smoke was taking, how choked his lungs and throat had felt. He lights a cigarette, celebrating his discovery of an atmosphere that can support life.

He stands and smokes as the tangles of feeling in his chest unravel. Here in the empty street his thoughts come cleaner, with the furor and music muffled and his safety blanket of a vodka bottle forgotten. His fear crawls away to lick its wounds. Again, he breathes deep.

In front of him Blixa makes an aborted movement, a half-step in no particular direction. He turns, eyebrows knotted, searching for Nick.

Nick has never been accused of lacking vocabulary, but he doesn’t have words for the way Blixa looks. Every inch of him flutters when the breeze whispers past, his half-spiked hair just as beholden to nature as his dress, now laying a bit less awkward, a bit closer to effortless. He looks almost healthy under the streetlight, not the capricious flirt at the bar but the type of girl who could be mistaken as sweet when she smiles.

Blixa does so, amused and gone soft at the sight of Nick standing all alone by the bar door. Nick barely recognizes him.

Maybe there’s a name for it, some overlong compound word for the distance Blixa traveled to get from handfuls of shattered glass to here. He should ask: what do the Germans call it, when you shed your old self like snakeskin?

“You look beautiful, love.” He says it like he means it. Who was he kidding? Blixa’s his best friend — he knows.

“I bet you say that to all the girls.”

Nick grins. He dances over to Blixa’s side, weightless with relief. “Do your fucking makeup.”

The sidewalk in front of Riskio spills down in long, flat steps to the tram line. Nick hops down the first two and hurts his ass when he drops onto it, making Blixa snort. He lays back and stretches, tries to reach his toes to the bottom step without lifting his shoulders.

Blixa sits at the bottom of the streetlamp, eyeing himself in the dirty metal of its base. “You didn’t say my eye was fucked up.”

“Yeah, you rub it.” Nick rolls his neck and watches Blixa fruitlessly wipe eyeshadow from his temple.

Blixa exhales, exasperated. “Tell me next time.” He pulls at the neckline of the dress, trying to even it out, then digs in his lap for the lipstick. The hem of the dress tugs up his thigh. Nick tries not to look at it.

He looks at Blixa’s red-tipped fingers instead, deft for all their bluntness as he uncaps the lipstick.

He shouldn’t look at that, either. Nick looks at the dark sky, a clouded absence of stars. Much safer.

The wisp of his cigarette smoke spirals lazily towards the buzzing streetlight. Blixa begins to hum. The lipstick clicks, and Nick turns his head to see Blixa finger-combing his hair, legs crossed at the ankle and illuminated incandescent gold. He straightens to look at his reflection and Nick catches sight of crimson.

“Narcissus drowned,” he says.

Blixa looks back at him. “Don’t be a shit.” His lips are scarlet, worn with an ineffable sincerity that Nick has a hard time writing off as drag.

Nick raises his hands, palms flat. “Sorry.” Blixa tosses him the lipstick, and he stashes it safely on the pavement to his side.

“We should bring dresses into style,” Blixa says. “You and me.” He scoots over close to Nick, knees up against his chest and arms around his knees. His dress pools on the ground below his hips. They both watch the street.

“Hm.” The zipper has tugged down Blixa’s back again — it rests a good few inches below his shoulderblades, threatening to split further with every breath. “I’m not quite convinced on this dress issue.”

Blixa shrugs. The zipper yawns wider. “It’s more practical. Only one article of clothing.”

“I’m sure it’s easier—” Nick says, and stutters into silence when Blixa crawls over him and stops halfway, knees bracketing Nick’s hips.

“It is easier,” Blixa says. There are vivid brown-and-yellow bruises on his knees that Nick doesn’t want to think about. His skirt is _so_ far up his thighs.

Nick takes a deep breath. Blixa tumbles down onto the steps on his other side, lying parallel to Nick, and Nick is overwhelmingly proud of himself for not grabbing him by the waist and pulling him back. “Easier how?”

“Easier to get dressed,” Blixa says. “Less to think about.”

“You can’t even zip it up yourself,” Nick says.

Blixa says, “That’s what you’re for.” Nick wrinkles his nose. “It’s easier to match. Dresses look good with everything.”

“You can’t say that,” Nick says, “You’re wearing fucking rainboots. That’s not matching.”

Blixa yanks at a loose thread on the hem. "It's easier to fuck," he says.

Nick makes a skeptical noise. "'S not that hard normally."

"It's easier to get fucked, then."

Nick's brain shorts out. He says, "Oh."

Blixa takes one look at him and laughs in his face. "The innocence of youth," he says.

"I'm older than you," Nick says, peeved, and then, ”Get fucked."

"Get fucked," Blixa agrees. "Good idea." He props himself up and plucks the cigarette from Nick's lips, which is rude, considering the circumstances. "Sure you don't want me to find you a girl?"

"What kind of girl?"

Blixa leaves a lipstick mark on the cigarette, smudged red-brown. "A pretty one."

"You're a pretty girl, aren't you?" Nick says. He means for it to come out flippant but instead it just sounds sort of weak.

Blixa looks at him like he's evaluating, the side of his mouth screwed up into something close to a smirk. For a minute Nick thinks he's going to take the bait. His heart lurches.

“Not your kind of pretty girl,” he says, and Nick will do anything, Nick will _beg_ forgiveness—

“I’ll find my own,” Blixa says.

Nick gathers his thoughts, or what’s left of them. He says, “What kind of girl are you going to find?”

Blixa exhales, the closest he can get to a smoke ring. “One that looks as good in a dress as I do.”

Nick, a card-carrying masochist, says, “I don’t look good in a dress.”

“You’re not wearing a dress,” Blixa says, and leans over Nick to stub the cigarette out on the pavement beside him — pointlessly, Nick thinks with a kind of incomprehensible fury, because they’re both lying on the _same steps_. As pointless as the way Blixa stays hovering over Nick, an elbow perched daintily in the center of his chest. If he put his full weight on it Nick’d be out of breath.

Nick’s kind of out of breath anyway. Blixa reaches down to draw a circle below his clavicle and all Nick can think is _girls do this_.

“How do you know?” Blixa asks.

Nick is doing his damndest not to stare at his fingers. Nick is doing his damndest to _ignore his dick_. “Know what?” he manages to say. It only sounds a bit breathy.

Blixa does the toothy side-smile that makes Nick’s stomach drop, says, “That you don’t look good in a dress. Have you tried?”

“I don’t need to,” Nick says. “I just know.”

“ _I just know_ ,” Blixa mocks. “You don’t.” He shifts his weight and Nick exhales, surprised, as his elbow digs into his ribs. Something brushes his hip — the world shudders for a few brief seconds before he realizes Blixa is digging in his pocket.

“Fuck off,” Nick says unconvincingly. Blixa tsks at him and hits at his belt until he lifts his hips, lets Blixa find the crushed pack of cigarettes in his back pocket. He closes his eyes and tries not to die.

Bixa shifts his weight again. Nick drops his ass back to the ground and prays that his obvious boner is funny and not pathetic. He hears the click of a lighter and opens his eyes. Blixa’s got a cigarette in his mouth and a beautiful Zippo with the flame still lit — God knows where he conjured that from.

“Here,” Blixa says. He takes a long drag of the cigarette and then pushes it into Nick’s lips. It’s barely a second of touch but Nick can still tell that the pads of his fingers are calloused to fuck and back, and he stares at them as Blixa pulls out another cigarette, trying to catch a glimpse.

Blixa puts the pack on the ground and the cigarette between his teeth. He raises his eyebrows at Nick.

Nick looks at Blixa in his pretty dress, laying on the ground and leaning on his chest, fingers still grazing the collar of his shirt. He can see them move when he breathes, which he’s doing quite heavily.

 _I signed up for this_ , he thinks, almost regretfully, and pushes himself up to press the lit cigarette to Blixa’s cold one.

His hair drops between them. Blixa smiles and almost drops his cigarette onto Nick’s chest. It takes eons to light, eons spent with Nick looking at the murmuring ember instead of Blixa’s hands or neck or mouth, and when he finally pulls back and Nick thinks he’s made it he catches a glimpse of the new lipstick mark on Blixa’s cigarette and sends an apology to God.

He lays his head back down and they lie there for a minute, Nick staring at the sky and Blixa draped over his chest, smoking. It’d be comfortable if they weren’t sprawled on concrete.

Nick wonders how convincing of a girl Blixa can be.

As if he heard Nick’s thoughts — which Nick wouldn’t put past him — Blixa makes a noise around his cigarette and picks up Nick’s hand by the wrist, holding it perpendicular to the ground between them. He says, “Stay.”

Like a _dog_ , Nick thinks incredulously. He thinks of Blixa carefully placing broken glass into his palms and doesn’t move his hand.

Blixa takes a last drag from his cigarette and places it between Nick’s forefinger and middle finger, then plucks the cigarette from Nick’s mouth and puts it between his middle and ring. Nick stares at him.

“Don’t drop it,” Blixa warns.

Nick has a brief but violent moment of apprehension, and then Blixa pushes forward and bites at the side of Nick’s neck.

Mother have _fucking_ mercy. He must have flinched because Blixa mumbles something indecipherable and kisses a bit lower, a bit softer. Nick, his entire body pulled taut, lets out a rush of a breath and lifts his free hand to Blixa’s hair. It’s tangled and greasy and it takes every ounce of willpower he possesses not to twist his fingers in it and pull him closer. He feels Blixa’s teeth on his skin and does his best to stifle a groan.

Blixa, characteristically, seems unperturbed by the whole situation. He hums appreciatively when Nick pulls at his hair but seems quite pleased to sit with his face in Nick’s neck, sucking hickies with patience and languor while Nick shifts against the tightness of his jeans and tries to remember how his lungs work.

The fraction of his brain left functional realizes that Blixa gave him the cigarettes to still his second hand. Cross with himself for being duped, he makes to toss them to the side, but Blixa’s too quick. He catches Nick’s hand, raises his head.

“I said don’t drop it,” he says.

Nick looks at the lipstick smeared across his lips and realizes what his neck must look like.

“Okay,” he says, whipped.

Blixa follows his eyes and grins like a terror.

“There’s your pretty girl,” he says in his scratch of a voice, and the only reason Nick doesn’t moan is because Blixa kisses him first, open-mouthed and wet. Nick says _Blixa_ against his lips and could swear the world shakes.

In his defense, kissing Blixa is distracting. It’s why he doesn’t notice Blixa untying the scarf from his belt with the fine motor skills of a pickpocket and shoving the cigarettes and lipstick in it, and why he doesn’t fight it when Blixa runs his fingers up his arm and takes not one, but both cigarettes out of his hand.

Blixa pulls away, mouth red with lipstick and shiny with spit. He says with grave solemnity, “You’re going to miss the party.”

Nick doesn’t have a whole lot of brain function left. He says something along the lines of, “Hmnh?”

Blixa rocks to his knees, pulling his spoils into his lap, and sticks both cigarettes into the side of his mouth. “Good luck,” he says around them, his voice an amused mumble.

By the time Nick figures out his words Blixa’s halfway back to the bar. He gives Nick a cheerful wave before he disappears, past the guy at the door, into the crowd.

Nick tells his dick to fuck off.

The bouncer doesn’t let him back in. As revenge, he breaks in through the back window and steals Blixa’s pants.


	2. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Morning after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> rolling stone posted an interview w nick a few days ago where he was like "yeah i love and miss blixa, i emailed him on his last birthday (JANUARY!!!) and he still hasn't responded" and i had to have a little serious sit-down with myself that i care so honest to god much about a person who is probably literally actually the devil
> 
> anyway though that reminded me that 6k of this had been sitting in my phone notes for months now. i can't morally justify it. shameless porn. look away. do something more productive w your time 
> 
> cw for gender essentialism/cis-centric thinking (same stuff from last chapter but in a sexual context), also for internalized homophobia? kinda i guess? or sth along those lines. guys being dudes, blixa bargeld being whatever the fuck blixa bargeld is

Nick wakes to a bear breaking down his door in the gray early morning. It takes formidable will, on Nick’s part, to haul himself out of bed long enough to be shoved aside and growled at by the half-coherent figure of Blixa. 

“You stole my pants,” Blixa says. He bristles in his makeup and flowery dress—he could scare away crows.

Nick did do that. “I did do that,” Nick says. They’re somewhere at the foot of his bed. He lets Blixa elbow him to the side and kick around the mess on the floor, clothes and lyric sheets and empty cigarette boxes. His eyes follow the swishing hem of Blixa’s skirt.

Blixa grumbles something, unintelligible. Nick assumes he’s not supposed to respond and instead leans against the doorframe, the crumbling concrete cold against his bare back. He tries to rub a bit of warmth into his arm and instead makes himself shiver. He could use a smoke.

The pants emerge underneath Blixa’s rubber-shod feet — he kicks Nick’s jeans away and kicks his boots off after them, disappearing into the pile of ephemera and laundry that occupies permanent residence on Nick’s floor. He yanks them on with one hand, back to Nick, steadying himself against the ancient vanity Nick’s been using as a desk for months. His dress catches in the waistband. Nick hums. 

“Fuck you, Nick,” Blixa says, turning. He gets a hand underneath the sleeve of the dress, pulling it laboriously over one arm at a time. It barely fits over the bony expanse of his shoulders, his spine.

Nick smirks. He’s waking up slowly. The autumn chill of the room helps. His feet are cold. 

Blixa wins the fight against ladies’ floral print and tosses it to the side where it settles, like a drifting summer bloom, onto a folding chair.

“I’ll mourn her,” Nick says. Blixa screws up his mouth into something resembling a smile.

They stand idle for a moment, both bleary with sleep or lack of it, before Blixa remembers he hasn’t finished.

“Do you—“ he starts, bringing the heel of his hand to his eye. Nick winces as he rubs messy eyeshadow further into his eyebrow. 

“I dunno, do I?” Nick lets Blixa scowl at him and pushes himself off the wall, brushing his cold shoulder against the warm skin of Blixa’s back on the way to the bed. He drops down onto the sheets and contemplates going back to sleep. 

His heart isn’t in it. He watches Blixa, shirtless and leather-clad and red-lipped, rummage through the small mountain range of garbage that exists in perpetuity against the walls of his home. He curls his fist into the threadbare hem of the pillowcase. 

It takes a minute for Blixa to find what he’s looking for: a sad, mostly-empty bottle of lotion, ringed with words Nick can’t read and abandoned to the sands of time between stacks of books and the shrunken husks of candles.

“Can I?” Blixa says, waving it with one hand.

Nick blinks and says "Uh, sure,” mildly confused, mostly used to it.

Blixa’s eyes crease up at the look on his face. He comes and shoves his way onto Nick’s bed, kneeing at his shoulder until he sacrifices the head of the bed to Blixa. He presses his shoulderblade against the wall and watches Blixa peer at himself in the chronically-sepia mirror hanging from the wall. 

The lotion pump doesn't even work anymore. Blixa picks off the dried crust around the nozzle's opening and tries it three or four times before giving up and twisting the cap off entirely, dragging his thumb through the off-white cream clinging to the straw.

He picks up a bit with his pointer finger and spreads it just under his eyebrow. The eyeshadow smears like wet paint.

Nick stares, and then he pointedly stops staring. He says, in what he hopes is a measured voice, “That’s how you get makeup off?”

Blixa doesn't say anything for a second, rubbing the darkened smudges to the outskirts of his eye. Then he says, "Guess."

Nick frowns. He drops his head back onto the pillow and looks up at the pointy underside of Blixa's chin, his sharp nose and cliff-edge cheekbones. He watches him smear the uprooted eyeshadow onto the back of his hand and leave it there. 

It takes longer than Nick would have thought to get it off. By the time his eyes are clear there are gray clouds of sparkling eyeshadow down the bony crest of Blixa's wrist, a few stray wisps trapped underneath his thumb, between his fingers. Blixa looks at his hand for a minute with consideration before he switches, getting the lipstick from around his mouth with his clean other hand. It seems like an inefficient process.

The lipstick takes longer. Blixa grumbles at the pink smears on his fingertips. Nick says, "What?"

"It ruins your lips," Blixa says. Nick watches with fascination as he bites at his chapped lips, peeling off a minute, translucent piece of skin. 

The logical part of Nick's brain thinks, _That's gross_. The idiot part says, out loud, "You're bleeding." Blixa looks down at him and Nick amends his words: the centimeter of skin he bit away is flushed and red, maybe because of a few watery droplets of blood but no more. It's barely visible in the dry, crimson-stained curves of Blixa's lips. "A bit."

Blixa raises his makeup-smeared middle finger to his lips, pokes it. Then he lowers it to Nick's mouth.

Nick's breath grinds to a halt in his chest.

"It's not blood," Blixa says. "Just lipstick."

Nick doesn't say a word. If he opens his mouth, he might do something he'll regret.

"Nick," Blixa says. Stern. A reprimand. Obediently, Nick parts his lips.

He can't look at Blixa's face. He looks at the shitty ceiling instead, its maps of water-stains. In the corner there's a kingdom of spiders, fortressed against the encroaching armies of paint cracks and mold. The pad of Blixa's finger touches his lips, then pushes past them.

Nick parts his teeth, bites gently. He touches his tongue to the angry line of calluses on the bottom of Blixa's finger. It tastes sour, the salt taste of sweat mixed with age-old liquor and bar grime. If there's blood, he can't tell. 

He looks at Blixa, expecting to see the sharp point of a smirk, but the expression on his face is something else entirely--a foreign look, ill-fitted to the exposed juts of his bones. Something approaching fond. 

Blixa pulls his finger out of Nick's mouth. He says, "See? I'm fine."

"Okay," Nick says. He shifts over on the bed and rests his cheek against Blixa's thigh, a curious kid's science experiment. Something dances across Blixa's face. The unacknowledged potential for a smile.

Out of the hubbub of Risiko, in the soft morning light, surrounded by Nick's things in Nick's room on Nick's bed, it's easier to look at Blixa. His cape of violence and authority fell off somewhere near his dress. He looks uniquely pale, his veined skin like some sort of creature that never found its way out of the ocean depths. His hands seem bruised and ruined under the makeup.

It could have been playing in the back of his head all along, the image of Blixa and his early morning fangs, beating down Nick's door. Anything to get him back, get him here, sober and dim-eyed but so close to the few nights Blixa followed Nick into his apartment, followed Nick into his tiny bed. They didn't touch, or talk about it, but he woke up with a head on his chest and a hard-on. 

Berlin has gray and ugly mornings. The memories linger: Blixa raising an indignant hand, yanking the curtain closed. Falling back into Nick's side in the new darkness and snoring.

It surprises Nick each time he remembers it, knife-edged Blixa curling into him like a kid. He so rarely thinks of him like that.

The makeup has been rubbed off almost entirely. It left the skin around Blixa's eyes and mouth pink from friction, the flush slowly draining as Blixa tilts his chin, regards himself. The light isn't great. Neither is the mirror.

"Look down," Nick says. Blixa does, his eyes closing for a brief moment and then snapping open indecisively. He looks somewhere below Nick's jawline instead of at his face.

Nick can't see anything egregious he overlooked. There's a bit of glitter caught in his eyebrow, but that doesn't hurt anyone.

"You're good," Nick says.

"You need some too," says Blixa. Nick doesn't get what he's referring to, not until Blixa touches the makeup-laden back of his hand to Nick's neck. 

In the storage room last night Nick had caught sight of himself in the spotted metal of a collapsed cabinet and put his hand to the canvas Blixa made of his neck. He pressed, trying to feel the bruises under the lipstick stains, but he couldn't -- too soft, right underneath the skin. It's not like they were intended to hurt. 

Maybe closer to marking territory, Nick thinks now. Wishful, yeah, but Blixa's hand is still grazing his neck. 

Nick says, "How bad?"

"Not bad." 

Nick struggles into a sitting position. His knee knocks the small of Blixa's back. He peers over Blixa's shoulder into the tiny, clouded mirror.

"Liar," Nick says. The lipstick's rubbing away, but the bruises went dark overnight. He looks like a high schooler.

Blixa laughs, low. He turns in place with awkward slowness and Nick stills as his gangly limbs curl around, his knob-kneed leather-painted spider legs climbing their inelegant way over Nick's lower body. They trap his torso almost thoughtlessly, abandoned debris left from a momentary lapse in Blixa's judgement.

He reaches out. Nick bares his neck on instinct. Blixa rests his hand on the crook between Nick's neck and shoulder.

Every inch of Nick's body is aware of the leg resting across his lap, the other pressing gently into his back. He doesn't know what to do with his hands, held together loosely at his lower stomach. They sing to touch Blixa's thighs, his waist, haul him in with both hands like a girl.

"I'll get rid of it," Blixa says. They're close enough that he doesn't have to talk loud. His gravel morning voice is so low that at points it disappears entirely. 

Nick says, "The hickies?" He keeps carefully still, trying not to think too much about the placement of his body. 

"The lipstick," Blixa says. Nick isn't looking at his hands but he feels a dot of cool, slick lotion bloom on his neck. It's an odd sensation; Nick smiles despite himself.

Blixa gives him a look, but he's got the crooked half-smile on his face too. It is a bit ridiculous, Nick thinks.

"Ticklish?" Blixa asks, wiping away lotion with the side of his wrist.

"A bit," Nick says automatically. Then he says, "Just a bit. Don't do it."

It seems like a prime weakness for Blixa to exploit. Instead, Blixa says, "Lift your chin." 

Nick does. He looks into the mirror and sees Blixa's spindly fingers pressed against his neck. They could circle his throat with no effort at all. 

Blixa, uncharacteristically generous, pretends he doesn't feel Nick swallow. He pushes his dry knuckles against Nick's neck and the lotion comes off, Nick can feel it, slowly but surely.

"Do you know how to get rid of hickies?" Nick asks, to break the silence.

"No," Blixa says. "And I wouldn't tell you if I did." He smiles when Nick goes red.

The lipstick has left damp pink smudges all down his wrist as his fingers finally disappear from Nick's neck. He says, "Last traces of the pretty girl."

"You said you were always a girl."

Blixa raises his eyebrows, pooling his hands together in his lap. He says, "You were listening."

"Yeah, of course."

The briefest hint of a smile flutters over Blixa's face. "I said that."

Nick reaches in between them, heartstoppingly careful, touches his fingertips to where the back of Blixa's hand has gone soft with lotion.

"So," Nick says, making sure he gets it right, "You're still here. And so is the pretty girl."

Blixa's smile dims. Some fierce concentration etches itself across his face. He watches Nick like a bullfight.

A hairline crack spreads thin roots through Nick's composure. He holds Blixa's stare, at a careening, empty loss for what else he should do. 

Blixa says, "You--" and then stops.

"What," Nick says. "What," he says again, after a moment's pause.

"You shivered," Blixa says.

The air drains out of the death-still room. Nick feels a hundred eyes on him, witnessing, and yet the only one there is Blixa, sitting oh-so-close. He doesn't have to see himself to know he's gone bone-white, bleached like exposed marrow in the sun.

Blixa finds room in his heart for a kindness. He takes Nick's loose, cold hands and pulls them to his waist.

They sit there for a heartbeat of a moment that lasts hours. Like he's looking for a handhold, Nick grazes his fingers over centimeters of skin, too scared to touch anything that wasn't given him. He's holding his breath but doesn't know what else to do, can't contemplate making a sound and interrupting this--this wish that has been granted, this transgression that has been allowed, this impossibility he holds in his hands like shattered glass.

Blixa inhales shallowly and Nick feels the skin press upward beneath his thumbs.

He sinks forward. They lean into each other, the thin lines of Blixa's lips against his ear. 

Into the dry, veined skin of Blixa's shoulder, Nick says, "Pretty girls make me nervous." 

An indistinct press against his ear, the minute shift of skin on skin. Blixa smiling. 

Nick's breath skates away, twisting and turning in warm, abrupt clouds into Blixa's hair, down his sloping back, up until it comes to an exhausted end against his jaw. Blixa pushes into it and Nick kisses his neck, trying to be delicate. He realizes belatedly that the soft noise held behind the humming cord of Blixa's throat is a sigh.

Experimentally, he broadens the width of his hands. His pinkie fingers hit the hem of Blixa's pants. 

Blixa tenses, barely but distinct. Nick feels it against his hands, his mouth, the warmed overlap of Blixa's leg on his lap and his knee against his back.

Nick's percussive heart pushes the word out of him: "Please." 

"What do you want?"

The question is almost a whisper. Blixa's voice is sandpaper-rough. Nick presses his lips against the mirror image of where Blixa left lipstick and bruises and feels his throat close up.

"You." He says it and feels sick. "You," he says again, "anything, I want to touch you, I want--" and then stutters off into silence, terrified of his honesty, terrified by his tongue. He buries his face in Blixa's shoulder.

Blixa says, quiet and steady like he's talking to a child, "I'm not your kind of girl," and Nick is an idiot of the highest grade but even he can't miss the simmering emotion underneath it, anger and something close to fear.

"You're wrong," Nick says. "You're wrong, Blixa, Blixa, I'll show you."

Underneath his hands Blixa's stomach is heaving, far-apart breaths like skipping stones. Nick pulls his right hand inward and splays it on Blixa's chest. His fingers brush the towering cliff of his ribs.

Blixa doesn't say anything for a long moment, and then he says, "Okay. Okay."

Nick breaks against the relief like a wave against rock, wraps both arms for an infinite, infinitesimal moment around Blixa's waist and then tugs him forward, thumbs on his hipbones, until he falls back onto his elbows. He looks up and sees shock dance across Blixa's face, watches it settle into a half-smile. 

This is where he'd kiss his way down a girl's chest, tease her for a while with his fingers and tongue to get her squirming before he ever goes any lower. When he has breasts and slight shoulders and a soft stomach in front of him it makes sense. He does it automatically.

But now his racing thoughts are too far ahead of him. The closer he gets, the further he goes. His heart hammers in his chest.

He leans down, kisses Blixa's stomach and then stays there, forehead against his skin, listening. His mouth is so close to -- well. He closes his eyes, feeling dizzy.

Blind, bent forward as in prayer, Nick reaches his hands up towards the immeasurable expanse of Blixa's ribs and feels Blixa catch one by the wrist, pull it over his nipple.

Nick's breath hitches. Blixa's hand pushes down so he rubs obediently, unsure of how far his fear and want will let him go. He scrapes his fingernail on the skin beside it and feels Blixa arch minutely, muscles flexing below the tight line of Nick's lips.

He breathes in-out, in-out, making sure Blixa can feel it. With the slow deliberation of ages, he noses upward, past Blixa's ribs, seeing their joined hands to the side of his chest and resting next to them, head against his collarbone like he wants to be held.

Blixa's fingers twitch. After a moment of uncertainty, they leave Nick's hand and grasp his upper arm, sliding on his sweaty skin, pull him over and centered until he's hovering over Blixa properly. Nick tugs his legs in and underneath him and Blixa adjusts automatically, knees bracketing his waist.

A deep, primal part of Nick's consciousness wants to lean forward until Blixa wraps his legs around him and figure it out from there. Blixa shifts incrementally underneath him and Nick wonders if he's feeling it too, if all he'd have to do to shatter Blixa's infamous composure would be hold him down. 

He can't. He's got to be good.

He looks at Blixa's flat chest, doesn't look at his face. He traces the gentle pink line his nail made on the left side and scrapes over it again, a bit harder. 

Blixa says quietly, "Don't be soft."

Nick looks up. He can't place the emotion drawing stark lines around Blixa's mouth, at the corner of his eyes. "I want to kiss you," he says.

Something behind Blixa's eyes shutters. He drags his hand up Nick's shoulder and neck, presses two fingers against Nick's lips until he opens for them. "Not yet," he says.

Nick bites down, gently at first, and then harder until he's sure it stings. Blixa makes a low sound of approval. He presses his fingers in for a brief second before pulling them out, holding them, limp and wet, in front of Nick.

Nick makes a split-second decision. He catches Blixa's fingers between his teeth again and pushes further, squeezes his eyes shut and sucks them in as far as they can go. Blixa stretches his fingers reflexively and he almost gags, his shoulders stiffening. 

Blixa says, "Schatz." Affection has crept in somewhere, warmed his tone. He presses his fingers down against the flat of Nick's tongue.

Nick knows how he looks. He knows how he sounds, too, his mouth forced open by Blixa's knuckles so he can hear it, the slick noises of skin and teeth and tongue. A voice in the back of his head says, don't make a promise you can't keep.

The blood rushes to his cheeks. He tells his obstinate doubt to go fuck itself and opens his jaw until Blixa's fingers slip out, says, "Let me prove it to you, let me prove it."

"You," Blixa says, shifting sharply upwards, and the rest of his words drop away. He falls back on his elbows. Nick's stomach flips. 

_He was going to kiss me_ , Nick realizes. _He wanted to_. 

Emboldened and infinitely warm, Nick bends down and presses his grin to Blixa's chest, then takes a nipple into his mouth and bites until Blixa laughs and squirms. He slaps at the back of Nick's neck and if Nick didn't know better he'd say it was playful. When he looks up Blixa is smiling.

It gives Nick courage. His hands run across Blixa's sides, over his hips, down.

They both go quiet. Nick's fingers come to a halt loose at Blixa's crotch, where the tight, ragged leather can barely hold itself together.

Blixa's breathing evolves into a calculation, measured in exact, identical seconds that Nick counts in the presence or absence of a gap between his lower stomach and the pants' hem. Nick doesn't know if he's breathing at all.

Not a single person in the whole of Berlin makes a sound as Nick takes hold of the cheap, oxidized tab of the zipper and pulls it open just a fraction of an inch.

Blixa's measured breathing stops. He goes still as the dead.

Nick stares at his hands on the zipper like they're someone else's. His brain has yet to catch up with his body--it fell away the moment Blixa's leg stretched across his lap.

Blixa says, "I told you dresses were easier." His voice is laboriously even, almost quiet. Nick aches to look at him. 

He can't. He keeps looking at his hands. Against his fevered better judgement, they pull down the cheap metal zipper. Every unhooked tooth hits like a bullet. Underneath the leather Nick can see--and feel, at the brush of his dry knuckles--the outline of Blixa's dick.

His gut twists, and his mouth waters. He can't decide which is worse. 

Blixa says his name, flat. Nick can't read his voice because he can never read his voice, because Blixa is capricious and incomprehensible, because the world Blixa inhabits is not one Nick knows. The laws of space and time do not comply. Nick begs God, begs Blixa that the way his name was said was good.

The zipper knots itself an end a centimeter before its track runs out. Underneath it is fabric that may have been white once. Nick grazes it with his thumb. Blixa's legs shift incrementally. Nick exhales and feels his own hot breath on his hands.

Something touches his face. Blixa's fingertips. 

Nick says in a voice he doesn't recognize as his own, "Lift your hips."

Blixa says something Nick doesn't understand and does as he's told. At first Nick just pulls at the top layer, the heavy, sweaty leather and metal, but he barely gets an inch before realizing he should pull off the band-aid all at once and hooks his fingers underneath the fraying elastic waistband of Blixa's underwear as well.  

They have to sit up to get Blixa's pants all the way off. Their foreheads knock together as Blixa kicks his legs out to the side and tries not to knee Nick in anywhere important, and Nick hears him chuckle quietly. Nick yanks the pants down with one hand and holds Blixa against him with the other, keeping him steady as he shakes the last vestiges of clothing off his feet.

The pants hit the ground with a sad thud. Nick remembers the same sound in the hallway at Risiko, so many years ago, just yesterday, when Blixa twirled in his flowery dress and let Nick hold him. 

Blixa settles where he came from, wraps his legs loosely around Nick's waist, and Nick knows what he has to do now but he isn't looking down. He's looking at Blixa's heavy eyes, his pale cheeks, his pretty red mouth, and remembering what he's doing this for. 

"Can I kiss you yet," he whispers into Blixa's cheek, and Blixa whispers back, "No."

There's a tenderness to it. Blixa brushes his knuckles against Nick's chin for a brief second before leaning back, slowly and deliberately, giving Nick space. He sits propped up on his elbows and Nick's eyes falter, tired of avoidance and self-control.

Okay--most dicks look more or less the same. It doesn't make Nick's heart race any less to see it, vulgar past the point of eroticism and into the realm of existential terror. Nick prevents himself from gulping and instead bites his lip, Blixa's soft chuckle making his head fever-thick.

The gap between dimly-lit boarding school handjobs and this, seemingly so trivial, yawns miles wide. _Don't make a promise you can't keep_ , Nick thinks, slightly hysterical. 

There are deep, severe bruises on the inside of Blixa's thighs, not one or two like accidents but mottled paintings of them, bite marks and the prints of nails and hands, left to bloom purple and yellow and black and blue on Blixa's thin skin.

He wants to touch them, tries but finds it suddenly impossible to move. The tension lacing through his body makes him fear for the steadiness of his hands. He feels lightheaded. When he looks up, Blixa is watching.

Nick says, "I--I don't," and Blixa's eyes go dark and dead.

"I told you," he says, his voice brittle as bones. "Not your kind of girl."

Nick crouches between Blixa's legs, at a loss for words.

Blixa stares at him with his cruel skull of a face and his mouth twisted into a tight line, the inflation of his chest at interval so low that it appears he refuses to breathe in. He's so different, so violently other from the soft, sweet girls Nick normally has in his bed--

Ah, shit.

"That's not what I, fucking--" Nick says. "That's not what I meant."

Blixa's fingers curl reflexively where they lay limp on his hips. It hits Nick, all at once, that _he's_ the one lying naked in someone else's bed. There are goosebumps on his arms.

"Here," Nick says. He takes Blixa's hand in both of his and kisses the knuckles, kisses the palm, kisses the painted thumbnail. "Here," he says again, pulling the hand to his tangled hair. His heart beats like a drum. He says, "Blixa."

Blixa says in his low voice, "Go on."

Nick takes a brief sojourn out from the realm of comfort zones and good sense and watches himself touch the underside of Blixa’s knee, say, “Whatever you want, baby girl.”

There’s a shuddering exhale of breath. He thinks it’s his own, before he looks up. Blixa's eyes are wide. 

_He's surprised_ , Nick thinks lamely. _I surprised him_.

Blixa parts his lips. He says, "You have a pretty mouth."

Nick abandons his rushing thoughts and stampeding heart and wraps his pretty mouth around the tip of Blixa's dick. 

The hand in his hair twists violently. Nick gasps a bit, which has the disarming effect of making Blixa groan, a low rumble in his chest. Nick wants to touch himself. Nick _needs_ to touch Blixa. He presses the flat of his tongue against Blixa's dick at the same time as he draws his own cold hands into his chest, fisting them in the caught warmth at his stomach. 

Cock, Nick discovers, does not taste particularly good. He stamps down the initial desire to cringe and opens his jaw a bit more. His eyes slide shut. Blixa's hips stutter, his knee knocking against Nick's shoulder.

Nick lets himself follow instinct and slips his arm underneath Blixa's leg, stroking the bony jut of his hip, and then gets his other hand out from under him and circles his warmed fingers around the base of Blixa's dick. 

Blixa makes a thick noise of approval. Nick's face burns. He fists it properly, tightening his grip, and this, at least, he knows--pressure, steady movement, and a long inhale of breath. He tries to get his lips down to meet his ring finger but shies away, fearful of his gag reflex. 

The hand in his hair flutters downwards, cupping his cheek. If he can't see it Blixa can feel it, now, the heat of embarrassment and arousal setting blotched pink fire to Nick's face and neck. Nick squeezes his eyes tighter and exaggerates the hollow of his cheeks as he sucks. It makes him feel dirty and foolish.

Blixa groans out half of a laugh. "Good boy," Nick hears him say, and Nick's eyes fly open without thinking. 

Bad move. A fraction of a second where he sees his knuckles and the heaving plane of Blixa's stomach and then he's looking up, getting the view so many girls have gotten of him, of Blixa with his mouth open and his eyes hooded and a heavy, proud flush to his face, looking at Nick with want.

Nick makes an entirely involuntary noise around his mouthful of dick. Blixa hooks his leg around Nick's shoulder and pulls him inward, forcing his back to arch. Nick bends forward until his eyes water and tries not to choke. He brings his other hand to Blixa's leg and shoves it further up on his shoulder--Blixa takes advantage of the leverage and thrusts his hips forward, just a bit.

He's trying hard to restrain himself, Nick can tell. The only sound in the room besides the wet noises of Nick's mouth is Blixa's heavy breathing, a metallic rasp that hitches every time Nick bobs his head. The hand on his cheek has crawled back into his hair, pressing its nails into his scalp like it's taking infinite patience not to push him forward. 

Nick has the distinct thought, _I want him to fuck my mouth_ , and then the even more distinct thought, _Hrrghk_.

Blixa's dick hits the back of his throat. He gags beautifully, whole body constricting as he hauls backward and coughs, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. "Fuck," Nick gets out, trapped between hacks and gasps. "Sorry, sorry."

"It's okay," comes Blixa's voice from above him. "You're doing--" a ragged inhale of breath, "really good."

Nick presses his cheek into the bruised skin of Blixa's inner thigh. He puts the heel of his hand onto the taut fabric over his dick.

Blixa's hand cards through his hair. It's not gentle, because Blixa doesn't do gentle, but it's close. Nick could stay here forever. There's a dick he has to suck first, though.

"Just let me--" he says, the hoarsest he's ever heard his own voice, and yanks down his boxers, gets a hand around himself and feels briefly relieved. Blixa makes a gut noise, almost a purr. His long fingers leave Nick's hair and wrap around his dick.

"Here, darling," he says, guiding the tip of his cock until it bumps Nick's lips. 

It's so filthy that Nick laughs in shock, leaves his mouth hanging open. He must look a sight: hair a mess, face scarlet, a hand on his dick and his mouth open for Blixa's. He looks up to Blixa with wide eyes to complete the picture. 

Blixa doesn't say anything. It doesn't really look like he can. He stares at Nick and breathes harshly, pushes his dick into Nick's open mouth. 

Nick's eyes flutter shut. He licks at the head of Blixa's dick, tries to keep his teeth covered but doesn't entirely succeed. Blixa's fingers hit his lips and Nick follows them down, more careful this time, breath held in the cavern of his open throat.

 He fists himself to the rhythm of Blixa's rough breaths. He's going to come _so_ fucking quickly after this.

Blixa rocks his hips up, testing. Nick leans into Blixa's leg and lets him do it although it makes his nerves sing, to relax the aching muscles of his jaw and let Blixa set the pace, trust that he won't give him anything he can't handle. He keeps his tongue flat over his bottom teeth and feels a corded vein push back and forth against it in slick, steady repetition.

Nick shifts, spreading his knees wider, moans a bit despite himself. It makes a wet, muffled noise around Blixa's dick. The rumble of laughter in Blixa's chest feels strained and shallow. 

_Fuck it_ , Nick thinks. He lets go of his dick and grabs Blixa's other leg, shoves it onto his shoulder. Blixa's gasp is worth almost choking--he squeezes his eyes tight as Blixa begins to lose his rhythm, hips jerking upward with more force.

Nick has never felt this fucking scattered in his life. He spreads his fingers wide against Blixa's thighs and holds tight, narrows his shattered concentration to the angle of his jaw, keeping the head of Blixa's dick away from the back of his throat.  Every time Blixa thrusts he comes forward to meet him, scarcely believing his own agonizing thrill at the weight and heat of it. He's so overwhelmed he almost doesn't follow when Blixa suddenly yanks at his hair with shaking fingers, says Nick's name on the crest of a groan. Nick pulls back with force and watches in awe as Blixa comes onto his heaving stomach, his dick red and wet.

Blixa shudders, from his shoulders all the way down. His legs tighten around Nick's neck. 

Numb, Nick licks the taste of Blixa off of his lips. His head is clouded with arousal but he can feel it, far away: the panic, crawling back. 

He buries his face in Blixa's leg, gets his hand back on himself and thinks of the sounds Blixa'd made, the aborted buck of his body against Nick's shoulders and hands, how he'd shuddered when he came. 

"Nick," Blixa says, his voice drawn and rough. Nick whimpers and bites his literal fucking tongue.

He can't look up. He doesn't know what'll happen if he does but it'll break the spell, he's sure, this charm laid over Berlin like a blanket to make it a place where he's allowed to kneel between Blixa's legs and get himself off, where he's allowed to exhale dry, ragged breaths from his abused throat into skin someone else has already bitten and dream about leaving a mark of his own. 

"Nick," Blixa says again in his fucked-out voice. Nick wishes he wouldn't say it, wishes he would say it again, curls his toes as the wisps of an orgasm come together in his chest and are then blown away by a hand fisting in his hair, hauling him up with brute force.

"Fuck you," Blixa says, "Look at me," eyes red and wide, patches of brilliant color still etched into his cheeks, a lost and violent twist to his mouth.

Nick gasps like he's been hit and kisses him. Blixa wraps his arms around his neck and Nick comes like that, knuckles pushing into Blixa's stomach with every stroke, held together with clarity. 

His stuttering breath escapes across Blixa's cheekbone. A soft movement by his lips: Blixa's grin.

Nick collapses inward. They lie in a sticky pile in the stillness of the room. After a moment, Blixa puts his hand back in Nick's hair.

The lazy warmth spreading through Nick's body gives him the courage to say, "I like that."

Blixa chuckles. It's a good sound. 

Nick turns his head and kisses Blixa's earlobe. He says, "Don't make fun of me."

Blixa says, "I wouldn't. Du hast solche Angst vor mir."

"That's cheating." 

"Ich hätte dich vor allen geküsst."

"Fuck off," Nick mumbles. 

Blixa makes a quiet, happy noise and pushes Nick off of him. "Baby," he says, crawls over Nick and creeps his way to the door. 

Nick watches dumbly as Blixa disappears into the hallway, naked as the day he was born. 

Their come is smeared all over Nick's stomach and hip. Nick makes an executive decision not to process this latest development. He rescues the pillow from the floor and stretches his stiff legs.

The door swings open. Blixa returns with a roll of toilet paper. 

"My savior," Nick says. He grins a bit too big as Blixa climbs back over him, dropping onto his back with a wumph. Blixa gets the come off his own chest, then--sweetly, Nick thinks--wipes it off Nick's.

He tosses the messy ball of paper onto the floor, pitches the roll of toilet paper into the far corner of the room. The loose end sails after it in a wide arc like a kite string.

"I'm going to forget that you did that," Nick says, "And then I'll be trapped in the toilet next time I take a shit."

Blixa rolls his neck over and looks at Nick. He says, "I can put it back."

"No," Nick says quickly. "Don't do that."

Blixa smiles, then yawns, the toothy stretch of a cat.

Nerves and affection flutter in Nick's chest. He says, "What time was it when you got here?"

Blixa shrugs. "Half six, maybe."

"Did you sleep?"

"No," Blixa says. Then he says, "I can stay?"

Nick's heart sings. He says, "Yeah, we'll work something out." Something impossible to articulate nestles into the hard lines of Blixa's face. 

A few quiet moments pass. The line of their bodies pressed together feels perfect and warm. 

Nick turns his head to ask Blixa how he's feeling and is interrupted by a kiss.

Blixa Bargeld, that creature of the abyss, he of the amphetamines and bare steel and broken guitar strings, who crawled into Nick's dreams with one death crow on one shitty TV set in one otherwise forgettable hotel room somewhere in Europe: Blixa Bargeld, that thing, kisses Nick like it makes him happy to touch him. 

Somewhere outside Berlin a rooster is crowing. Somewhere within Berlin Nick is holding Blixa against him and can't kiss back for how much he's smiling, which feels like the same thing.

They break apart after a few moments with tired reluctance. Blixa breathes warm, quiet breaths against Nick's lips until he's still. 

In the eternal, precious moments before sleep Nick feels Blixa reach up and pull the curtain closed. Outside the tram passes by.

**Author's Note:**

> visual accompaniment: [Exhibit A](https://i.pinimg.com/474x/48/7d/54/487d547ee996293f046781e6809339f0.jpg), [Exhibit B](http://iv1.lisimg.com/image/1731615/500full-blixa-bargeld.jpg), [Exhibit C](https://i0.wp.com/78.media.tumblr.com/5277f0ce690914f57e500f8bde1d8e31/tumblr_oz49kyCzN41up6k2qo1_1280.jpg)
> 
> sorry for getting my gender all over you, blixa. / [twitter](https://twitter.com/anahaedra)


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